After the Republican-led House Government Operations Committee passed a terrible substitute to S.B. 934 that only raise the minimum wage to an insulting $8.50/hour and strips out indexing the minimum wage to inflation, the full House passed a version (pdf) that is much closer to the original bill passed by the Senate this afternoon on a 76-34 vote. Shortly thereafter, […]

NOTE: this story has been updated HERE. The Republican-led House Government Operations Committee passed a substitute to S.B. 934 that reduces the final minimum wage to $8.50/hour and strips out indexing the minimum wage to inflation, ensuring that, if it is passed, workers will not keep up with the shrinking value of the dollars they earn. $8.50/hour means that full-time […]

If you want to know just how extreme Republicans in Jackson, Michigan are, the fact that they chose Allen B. West as the keynote speaker for Lincoln Day fundraising dinner last week tells you pretty much everything you need to know. Besides being one of the most intentionally outrageous tea partiers in the country, West recently attacked the patriotism of […]

Bobby McKenzie, one of three Democratic candidates for the 11th Congressional District seat now held by Kerry Bentivolio, received the coveted endorsement of Dean of the House John Dingell this past week. McKenzie is a former counterterrorism officer for the U.S. Department of State and will face off against Dr. Anil Kumar and former progressive radio host Nancy Skinner in […]

Efforts by the Koch brothers front group Americans for Prosperity to scuttle the Detroit bankruptcy settlement were shot down in flames as the state legislature overwhelmingly voted yesterday to contribute $194.8 million toward the deal. This was the amount needed to ensure that the deal did not collapse and which saves the Detroit Institute of Arts’ priceless art collection while […]

It’s not going too far to say that American workers everywhere benefit on an ongoing basis from the hard work labor unions have done over the past several decades. I work at a non-union company that treats its employees very well. They compete for talent with other companies, including union shops, and this encourages them to do right by us, […]

This family is brought to you by Loving v. Virginia, Windsor v. United States & now Whitewood v. Wood #DecisionDayPA pic.twitter.com/bIgQ8TJYUo — Sarah A. Newman (@westenismydog) May 20, 2014 In their decisions striking down same-sex marriage bans, judges have been trying to outdo each other with definitive statements calling the injustice that has been done LGBT couples, and America’s sense […]

Detroit Bulk Storage has been denied a permit by the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to store petcoke on the banks of the Detroit River. As you may recall, they were storing giant piles of the toxic byproduct of tar sands oil refining by Koch Carbon, an energy company owned by the billionaire Koch brothers. Last year, the piles were […]

Why does our state lag behind Kansas and West Virginia?

Yesterday a federal judge overturned Oregon’s gay marriage ban. Today, an announcement is expected in a similar case in Pennsylvania. (UPDATE: Indeed, the PA judge ruled the ban unconstitutional). Equality is spreading, and we should celebrate.

At the same time, however, a vote last night in Saginaw’s city council shows how far we in Michigan still have to come, as the city council decided not to protect the city’s gay and transgender population from discrimination in employment and public accommodations. Advocates have been bringing local non-discrimination ordinances to cities across Michigan because the state still fails to provide protection from employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

In a shocking development that surprises absolutely nobody, we learn that the Koch brothers, through their front group Americans for Prosperity, is working overtime to sabotage the “grand bargain” settlement that would bring the city of Detroit out of bankruptcy, save the Detroit Institute of Arts’ priceless art collection, and keep innocent retired pensioners from being thrown into abject poverty […]

As I was reading a Detroit News op-ed about raising the minimum wage this morning (Eclectablog motto: “we do it so you don’t have to”), I was, of course, unsurprised to see them advising House legislators to reject the bill passed by the Senate to raise the minimum wage to $9.20 by 2017. According to them, “the Senate bill isn’t […]